Quite often when we do Moto Gymkhana displays at shows and exhibitions a lot of riders tell us that "I won't do that because I don't want to drop my bike". On the face of it appears to be a quite sensible reaction considering the activity that's going on in the arena, but when you begin to analyse the statement it soon becomes clear what these riders are actually telling you.

When we watch a half decent rider doing their thing out on course we see that they get some serious lean angles even though they're not going very fast, they have visible movement in the steering and they are making heavy use of the throttle and brakes. Most riders however would have never got their bikes anywhere near these control inputs out on the road, let alone in a car park so there is a disonance between what they see and what they 'know' they can do.

A lot of riders can accept this disonant state as being an indication that they will have much to learn and it will take a lot of time and effort before they will be able to do what they see others being able to do. For other riders all they see in this disonant state is that if the activity is even attempted there is bound to come a time when they will be forced outside of their comfort zone. They like staying in their comfort zone because they 'know' that they are not going to crash if they stay well within it and any activity that looks like it will take them outside of that zone will automatically be assumed to lead to a crash. This is the reason why this type of rider will say "I won't do that because I don't want to drop my bike", not because he will drop the bike but because he thinks he will drop the bike.

As it turns out most riders manage to stay on their bikes quite easily the first few times they attempt a Moto Gymkhana course and they only start to fall when they really start to push at the edges of the envelope. As this envelope pushing only happens when the riders are almost completely hooked on the sport, they see crashing as just being no more than an occupational hazard.

I agree, as a novice at this game myself, we all start by thinking, this looks like a quick way to crash my nice bike.

I did an informal count of the very few bike spills we had during this years New York sessions. Almost without exception none of them were the feared low side front end wash out due to sliding tires or the big high side due to too much throttle.

The main cause of the guys getting into trouble was probably being too cautious on a tight turn and actually going too slowly for the amount of lean they were attempting, resulting in the bike simply laying down at about 8 mph.

I know one of our troupe (who I shan't name :-) managed a genuine low side flipping into a high side on his Suzuki SV650, but tells me he was no doing a Moto-Gymkhana exercise at the time, so it doesn't count

i know one of our troupe (who i shan't name :-) managed a genuine low side flipping into a high side on his suzuki sv650, but tells me he was no doing a moto-gymkhana exercise at the time, so it doesn't count

Michael R asks a quite common question as people will always think that one type of bike is better at Moto Gymkhana than another. You only have to walk down pitlane at a Japanese Moto Gymkhana competition to be amazed at the enormous range of bikes that are being used and if any one type of bike was better at Moto Gymkhana then you would expect that type to be in the majority. This may be slightly true for the NSR250R, but that bike has deep cultural significance in Japan so you would expect to see quite a few of them.

Each type of bike will have advantages and disadvantages, but the course designer usually takes these differences into account so that the overall time is entirely down to the skill of the rider.

The best bike FOR Moto Gymkhana is the one you are riding IN Moto Gymkhana!